Reply to Help: What does "play-based" even mean?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]
Yes, ideally it is about balance. But if the preschool does not have properly educated/experienced staff, more damage can be done by pushing academics than in a play-based environment. I would steer away from an academic preschool unless I trust the competency of the staff. At least one person in a preschool should have early education credentials, and I know at least one preschool where that is not the case. 
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I actually disagree. My son is at a preschool with no staff with ECE credentials, and it is SO MUCH better in every way than the preschool that had credentialed staff.  In a best case scenario, long-time childcare workers without degrees are just good with kids (and, more importantly, managing classrooms competently.)  On the other hand, an indexperienced but credentialed teacher can be a nightmare.  And pushing "academics" at least means that the staff is engaged with the kids, as opposed to letting them go all lord of the flies.  [/quote]

[b]
It's pretty hard to be credentialed without supervised exporsure to children--it's required as part of the certification.[/b]

Play-based does not mean free-for-all. It means that children learn skills to prepare them for academics through play. [b]The best preparation for academic success when you are talking about the 7-and under set means the ability to follow directions, stay focused, exchange ideas with verbal accuracy, participate in conversation, and acquire fine motor skills (which are correlated with gross motor skills).[/b] A teacher who demands that a three year old sit still and write on a sheet of paper is not developing the whole child. Child psychologists observe that children who participate in dramatic play, in particular, are able to develop executive functioning skills compared to children who do not. [/quote]

Trust me, the level of exposure to kids required to work in DCPS schools is really minimal.  Any single one of the daycare ladies at our daycare had more experience than the collective ECE staff at our highly regarded DCPS.

Also, nothing of what you describe there sounds like "play."  Please explain, in detail, how you teach a room of 16 3 year olds to "follow directions, stay focused, exchange ideas with verbal accuracy, participate in conversation, and acquire fine motor skills" through play.  [/quote]

Here's one example

Re-creating "real-life" situations: restaurant, grocery store, auto repair shop, teacher-student, doctor, vet. The teacher asks questions to get the students organized as a group (e.g., what furniture does a restaurant have? Who are the people who work at a restaurant? What kind of food should the restaurant serve? etc., etc.), gets props ready, helps the students to get in character, observes, etc. There is a lot of following directions, staying focused (in one's role), exchanging ideas, conversation, writing (e.g., the menu, the check, etc.), and math (how much should we charge? how much does one drink and one pizza cost?)

At our school, the students actually served the parents in their "restaurant" at the end of the semester. For the kids, it was directed play, not chaos, and it was a far, far better way to incorporate the skills required for school than rote worksheets which are meaningless for children this age. Children need a context for their learning.

For the kids, this was wonderful pretend play, but as you can see, there are a lot of

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